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DTivo problems:( Help

My DSR6000 is driving me crazy! It started to digitize or digital breakup, what ever you want to call it. Its driving me crazy.

It breaks up when watching it live and when you replay the buffer or a recorded show it breaks up in the same place. It never breaks up in a different place. I reformated and installed 2.5xtreme thinking it was the Hard drive, same thing. I tried a different hard drive same thing.

Thought it may be heat because when it sits for a long time unpluged and then restarted no digitizing for about an hour. but then digitizing. The panel states 46 degrees normal. I leave the cover off and still same thing.

Other non DTivo receivers work fine so I don't think its the cable or card. I though it might be the ribbon cable from the p/s so I repositioned a few times and still same thing.

I moved it up stairs to extract so video but it reboots in a loop. So I figured it might be the power supply and not enough voltage. I checked the power supply but on a standard voltmeter it seem to be stable and right on. I increased it a volt and the digitizing got really bad. I decreased the voltage a volt and it started rebooting in a loop. I then put it back and now I am back where I started.

Maybe it is the power supply but they cost so much I don't want to trouble shoot with 150.00 parts.

If you're getting a signal strength below 70 on the channel(s) in question then that may be what's causing your problem. You could also be experiencing some interference that's degrading the signal (i.e. rain, dense cloud cover, trees, flock of migrating geese, etc.). Pixelisation is generally due to momentary loss or degradation of the signal, causing the image to breakup or pixelise. I doubt that it has anything to do with the receiver itself. You could have a bad cable of flaky connection that is causing higher signal loss. If the signal strength drops below a certain threshold, the image will suffer.

The breakup will always occur at the same spot whether you're watching "live" TV or if you've recorded it because you're always watching the recorded image on a DTivo. The signal feed gets recorded to the hard drive and buffer and is then played back for viewing. If you set up a non-Tivo DTV receiver side by side with a DTivo and then do an A/B comparison between them using a live DTV feed then you will always see the DTivo video lag behind the standalone receiver.

You don't need to format a drive for use in a Tivo. The software sets up the file system during installation and wipes out any formatting you do ahead of time. It's usually better to use a clean, unformatted drive (i.e. low-level formatted) when installing a Tivo image or Xtreme.

Rebooting problems have been address ad infinitum in this forum so if you can't find an answer to that problem then you're not looking very hard. Run a search and I'm sure you'll find some help there. You are on the right track by checking the ribbon cable but there are other things that could be causing the problem as well. I've posted some troubleshooting tips and links in the How Tos sticky thread so you might want to check that out.

If you find it is actually a power supply issue then you might want to try swapping the small switching board with one from a SA Tivo power supply. They're available from www.allelectronics.com for about $4.95 plus shipping. Look in the Experts forum for info on the Tivo power supply.

Please don't PM me or any other members looking for personal assistance. You'll do better by posting (after you've exhausted the search feature, of course) and taking advantage of the collective expertise of the membership instead of a single individual that may or may not be able to help you. Thank you and enjoy your stay at DDB!

I've Got the Same Problem...

I've learned the following: most of the apps use Setpri. I thought it was on my system but wasn't. I had to add it myself to /bin. I added the command to the beginning of rc.arch, rc.net, rc.remote-login, and at the end of rc.sysinit (before the call to bash) using setpri fifo 1 $$. Did not help, but when I do a PS AUX - I can see it's calmed things down. But I still get the "garbage"

It's not my MultiSwitch as I took it out of the loop and it did not fix anything.

Transponder - I went up on the roof and tried adjusting the dish. No luck. I notice the "garbage" most on 248 (FX). My strength is 79 - 80 on transponder 10. - No luck

I tried Freepages last night - (increase memory I think) but it did not help.

The weird thing I noticed last night was that when I saw the problem, I switched to the other tuner and rewound the show but did not see it there. Went back to the first tuner and rewound and I saw it again in the same spot. Upon further review only parts of the picture was actually messed up. The people were pixilated, but the background was not. - What does this mean?

I'm starting to think the problem is in the MPEG decoder not anywhere else, but I'm not an expert.

How often is the problem occurring? I've been having similar problems intermittently with all 5 of my dtivos. Happens on most all channels using v2.5.2 or v3.1.0. I think the problems are not with the hardware/software but at DTV's end. The strange thing is that sometimes switching to the alternate tuner clears it up for a while.

See this for an instance of what was happening last month. This seems to be happening still on an infrequent basis. Today things look to be perfect for me here, although signal strength is not at max since there is cloud cover.

Daily...

I'm only home in the evenings. I see it mostly on 248 FX and on Comedy Central.

So it might not be related to anything happening with the New York locals. I've had this problem for over a year, but it's really pissing me off now. It only happens for a couple of seconds... the sound continues fine just parts of the picture breakup. I might only see it once in the evening or a few times really close together.

I'm seeing the exact same problem as you described. I don't think it's related to access card or hardware. I have redundant hardware including the dish. It's something in the data stream, maybe excessive compression. And maybe the dtivo is more susceptible to it.

It is probably one of the only downsides to having DirecTV. I'm wondering if there is any heavy sunspot activity at the moment because I have heard that it can wreak havoc with the satellite feeds.

Please don't PM me or any other members looking for personal assistance. You'll do better by posting (after you've exhausted the search feature, of course) and taking advantage of the collective expertise of the membership instead of a single individual that may or may not be able to help you. Thank you and enjoy your stay at DDB!

I have this problem on all channels, If I put my RCA standard on the same line no problems at all. I think it is the DTV receiver.
When I first plug in the receiver and it is has been off for a while it is perfect. After an hour it starts breaking up and acting up. I figured Heat. Even with the cover off it still ends up with the same result.

Picture Artifacts Breakups Blockiness Pixelation...

I have the exact same problem as described in the first post of this thread. I'm glad I found it - it's not just me! Anything new since April?

The next thing I was thinking of trying, since the prevailing hypothesis is that the problem is heat related, is to put 486 processor-type heat sinks on the 5 big IC's on the motherboard. Has anyone tried this already or added some other form of additional cooling that solved the problem?

When I went and checked today, many of the signal strengths were down a bunch - more interestingly I also noticed that transponder 31 had "0" strength. (Did the satellite lose a transponder?!) This was about 45 minutes ago.

I just went back and checked signal strengths again, it is now more like: